Regional Gender Response Skills and Community Development Projects launched

17-08-13 

Section of participants

Dignitaries at the high table

The official launch of the campaign to promote girls enrolment into non-traditional professional trades has taken place in Bolgatanga with a call on parents and stakeholders in the educational sector to encourage women to embrace professions that are presumed to be the preserved of their male counterparts. The Deputy Upper East Regional Minister, Mr Daniel Syme, who made the plea lamented that economic and socio-cultural barriers that impede and discourage girls from pursuing the non-traditional trades are duly removed through educational and other communication campaign strategies. He said government in its bid to promote girl child education will not renege on its commitment to empower women in political decision making as a composite index for enhancing good governance. This, he emphasised was being facilitated through a participatory approach to national development decision making at all levels. More so, poverty among women will be drastically reduced through alternative livelihood schemes with targeted identifiable groups being women in deprived areas as well as the vulnerable and the marginalised in society. According to Mr Syme, a total of 59 MMDAs are benefiting from the Gender Responsive and Community Development Project (GRSCDP) of which 5 are in the Upper East. They are Navrongo, Bolgatanga, Bongo, Sandema and Bawku. The Regional Director Department of Women, Miss Jocelyn Adii, said the GRSCDP has since its inception seen some level of achievement and mentioned the provision of 125 computers and 10 motor bikes to Community Development Vocational set ups in the said beneficiary districts as some of the interventions. Meanwhile, 524 girls from poor households have been awarded scholarships to pursue technical skills training for a period of three years. This, Miss Adii, noted goes on to confirm government’s commitment to advancing the cause of girls through enrolment into non-traditional professional trades. The Regional President Past and Present Assembly Women (POWA), Madam Agnes Atayila, lauded the intervention by the gender ministry to  empower girls and encouraged girls to venture into professional trades such as plumbing electrical installations, carpentry and motor vehicle mechanic among others. In an interview, the Director of Service Clients DAPEG Ltd, Mrs Dephine Brew-Hammond, who represented as the guest speaker told Radio Ghana that  4- year project which is geared at promoting gender mainstreaming across national development processes and said to cost US$14.63 million will enhance the economic ,cultural legal and political conditions of majority of Ghanaians, particularly women.

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